Women leaders connect Alley to Valley

Does gender really matter when you network in Silicon Valley? I would argue that it doesn’t. If you have an idea to pitch, a problem in search of a solution or a curiosity about your competition, there is an event for that. Gender will not keep you from making the right contacts, but confidence might.

At a recent event that brought high-powered women from the East and West Coast together, the confidence issue came up frequently. The “Alley to the Valley” event hosted 50 women leaders from the tech, finance and the entrepreneurial sectors, and a number of women said it’s time to strengthen the confidence factor and break down the perception barriers.

Maria Cirino, co-founder and managing director of .406 Ventures who’s worked in the VC space for 25 years, said, “If you are a woman entrepreneur and can’t raise money, it’s because it’s either a bad idea or you haven’t thought it through. Or two, you are lacking in confidence. But I don’t think it’s gender.”

Cirino should know. This woman has quite a track record. She was at Lotus Development Corp. when it IPO’ed in 1984. It was later acquired by IBM. She was with Guardent, acquired by VeriSign. Then she was at I-Cube, a successful IPO acquired by Razorfish, and multiple IPOs after that.

Cirino did however say that women often come to her and say they are in need of advice, when what they want is money to fund their business. Don’t dance around the issue, Massachusetts-based Cirino said, just come out and say it. “That’s what a man would do,” she added. Gender shouldn’t get in the way, she said.

Theresa Ranzetta, partner at Palo Alto-based Accel Partners, said there are plenty of reasons for women to be confident. That’s the positive message women should be hearing, she said, not the life-work balance debate.

For Ranzetta, the most efficient women in business are working mothers. “If you find a working woman you should hire her,” she said. “They are strong and efficient because they know how to juggle a career and a family.”

When women are the CEOs they can control the work culture and that, in turn, allows them to hit their marks, she added. These are all positive trends in today’s working environment. She said today’s 20-something entrepreneurs are risk takers and she sees no distinction between young men and women.

Perhaps that’s because they are in Silicon Valley, where the entrepreneurial culture is a lifestyle and the backbone of the valley’s character. Out here we foster a can-do attitude where women are VCs, angel investors and part of the high-tech industry. I think confidence runs higher in the valley compared to other parts of the country.

The Alley to the Valley women want to change that. East Coasters want to understand what Silicon Valley women already know — how to succeed in greater numbers. What we can do is share our way of doing business with others across the continent. That turns into a movement, which quietly spreads from West to East and that creates a powerful change.